Has the president got a second lady?

The Kenyan government may be dogged by corruption scandals and cabinet feuds, but it was the question of the president's marriage - or more precisely, how many marriages he has - that caught the attention of the press this week.

Polygamy is an accepted perk for successful men in Kenya, but President Mwai Kibaki has taken no pleasure in persistent reports that he has a second marriage. In a statement faxed to newsrooms on Sunday afternoon, the president said the claim he had a second wife was "a lie". Mr Kibaki declared that he had only one wife, his first lady, Lucy Kibaki.

The statement followed press reports quoting an activist for Mr Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition party, Mary Wambui, insisting she was indeed the president's second wife "and those saying otherwise are daydreamers".

The scandal initially arose in January, when the president made his first official denial he had a second wife. The latest denial only excited press curiosity, however, and reporters were promptly dispatched to Ms Wambui's two homes - one in the capital, Nairobi, and the other in the town of Nyeri - to discover whether she still enjoyed the police protection due to members of the president's family.

The guards were there, the papers concluded, but were no longer in uniform. The Nation quoted security sources saying the decision to have the guards in plain clothes was taken after the president disowned Ms Wambui last year.

As Kenya's parliament reopened this week after a three-month recess, legislators were warned that the public was tired of their "cat-and-mouse game" over introducing a new constitution.

Reforms aimed at trimming the powers of the presidency have been held up by two years of wrangling. It seems it is easier to promise to give up power when you are in opposition than to make real sacrifices when you are in government. "MPs must be critically aware that their past performance has not endeared them to the public," the Nation warned. "The numerous adjournments, lack of quorum, partisan and uninformed debates and other anomalies... must be left to history."

Bloody clashes between ethnic Somali clans in north-east Kenya dominated the front pages on Wednesday. The latest fighting, in which 28 people were killed, is "a vicious cycle of an eye-for-an-eye", the Standard reckoned. "[The two clans] share one culture, one religion and one language. They are, however one looks at it, brothers and sisters. But their relationship with one another has been so tenuous that perceived injustice to a member of one clan by a member of another has been enough to set off a trail of blood and agony."

Meanwhile, a woman's right to choose her sexual partner preoccupied Muthoni Wanyeki, in her column in the East African. Telling teenagers to abstain from sex - as a way to curb the spread of HIV/Aids - would only work if girls have the right to say no, she pointed out. Infection rates among African women aged between 15 and 24 are four times those of young men, she said. Among other factors, she blamed early marriage and rape in warzones. "If we are serious about addressing the HIV/Aids pandemic, we should prioritise enforcement of laws on early marriage, defilement and rape," said Wanyeki.

The Mau Mau anti-colonial struggle of the 1950s has attracted renewed interest in Kenya recently with the publication of two new books by western academics. Harvard academic Caroline Elkins' book Britain's Gulag was criticised by Charles Onyango-Obbo, in the Nation, for focusing on the suffering of civilians detained by the British rather than the Mau Mau fighters.

"With every new book the Mau Mau fighters become more and more faceless," he lamented. "All we see is a picture of a ruthless Britain killing helpless peasants."

Onyango-Obbo regretted Kenya's failure to laud its heroes. "The only face we keep seeing on TV and the newspapers from that period is [the Mau Mau commander] Dedan Kimathi. And even then he is always shown half-naked, bedridden and shackled [after his capture by British forces]. In all other liberation wars we usually see images of strength."

There are plans to sue the British government on behalf of the survivors of detention, who were tortured while in British custody. But Onyango-Obbo argued that the relatives of former fighters should not be compensated. "These people make a choice to die. They shouldn't be patronised."